Q&A: Sony’s Game Design Chief Talks PlayStation Vita

Photo: Sony

LAS VEGAS — Shuhei Yoshida is confident in the PlayStation Vita, even in the face of stiffer-than-ever competition in the handheld games space.

Vita’s high-powered tech and console-quality software make it a great value for $250, the head of Sony’s worldwide game development studios said in an interview with Wired at the 2012 DICE Summit earlier this month. Nintendo launched its competing 3DS platform at the same price point last year, but quickly slashed it to $170 after disappointing sales. Sony will release the PlayStation Vita in the United States on Wednesday.

Yoshida also dished out status updates on a few missing-in-action Sony products, like the oft-delayed PlayStation 3 game The Last Guardian, the PlayStation Suite framework for indie game development and downloadable PlayStation 1 games on Vita.

The full Q&A is below.

Wired: Why isn’t there going to be a UMD transfer program for North America, like there is in Japan?

Shuhei Yoshida: I’m sorry we are not doing it in the States, but there are two factors that contributed to the decision as I understand it. I’m not in a position to make that kind of business decision. The system has been introduced in Japan, where there is a much larger demand for PSP games. When you look at the release schedule of new titles there are still lots of PSP games being released in Japan and being announced for release. Lots of people who are interested in trying Vita are also interested in playing PSP games that they might purchase before Vita comes out, and will not necessarily choose the digital version.

So there is a lot more demand … to introduce a program like that. The other point is that when you look at PSP titles sold digitally in the States or Europe, games are sold for a really reasonable price. You can buy Final Fantasy Tactics for $10. That’s a great price. There are many, many games that are sold at an affordable price. Because people in Japan are not getting the digital copy for free, because it costs us money to develop and maintain the system so we are asking people to pay somewhere between $5 and $10 to receive the digital copy in addition to what they have on the UMD. When you compare that to the price of games here, PSP games in Japan are sold at a much higher price, so people see the value in spending the $5 to $10 to get the digital copy. But when the games are already sold at a lower price in the U.S. we see less value in introducing that kind of system. The combination of the new titles available, or the lack of, and the price difference, the company decided to do that.

Wired: You’re right that PSP caught on in Japan more so than in the U.S. What’s different about Vita that’s going to cause it to succeed here?

Yoshida: There are a few key factors that contributed to that. When PSP came out five or six years ago, it was a great piece of tech: big screen, beautiful 3-D graphics, it was almost as good as a PS2. At that time it was very exciting to be able to play those games on the go. But the platform didn’t provide much more than that in terms of features. So we game developers created games and the software business for a few years was great on PSP.

Many developers and publishers in Japan decided to shift focus to portables.

But after that we tried to come up with some new concepts and new ways to use PSP, and really struggled to come up with some new experience that you cannot get on the home console. During that period, the new home consoles came out, PS3, 360, with much better graphics, in HD. So it’s not hard to imagine people’s interest kind of, you know, defused. The lack of a dual analog system for PSP made the gameplay experience control much more compromised, to play the kind of games that people in the States or Europe cherish. Their action-adventure or FPS. That’s one big thing.

The other thing was piracy. Piracy was really, really killing the software business. We know our games were played by millions of people in the world but not necessarily being paid for. Our business partners know, and they’re disappointed in the number of sales of games on PSP and it’s very natural for them to make the business decision to divert resources to other business opportunities. At that time, the PS3, 360 and Wii next-generation consoles were coming and these games were bigger and require more resources than PS2 era.

We made a mistake as well — right after the PSP launch we were preparing for the PS3 launch, and that took a lot more resources. So we shifted development resource away from PSP to and that contributed to the lack of business return coming from piracy for third parties really helped reduce the number of new games. But compared to that in Japan, there are other factors which helped the portable game. Ironically, in the development in Japan, developers in Japan struggled to jump on the current-gen home consoles, the high-end graphics, shaders, multi-core architecture. The enormous resources that are required to create titles for those home consoles of today.

So many developers and publishers in Japan decided to shift focus to portables. It’s one generation older in some cases two genrations older from a core tech standpoint. It’s a very comfortable zone for them to create games. You’ve seen many great home console franchises shift focus so the latest new sequel started to come out on portables first. The popularity of co-op play, Wi-Fi, ad-hoc like Monster Hunter style games, caught on. That all contributed to the huge popularity of portable games in Japan. It’s a positive cycle, right? The publisher thinks, ‘Great, we can make these games and we can sell them and we can make money.’ So that’s where the consumers are still.

Wired: You mentioned piracy. What do you think: Do you have Vita locked down and protected from piracy?

Yoshida: There will always be the effort by those hackers. They are so smart, they’re sharp. But when you compare what happened with PSP to PS3, there are some hacking activities on PS3 but we’ve been doing much better. Our teams in Japan learned a lot and are applying that knowledge to fortifying PS Vita. So hopefully we will have much stronger protection on PS Vita.

Wired: You brought up hardcore gamers and twin analog sticks as well. Is that enough to sustain a platform? We see casual gamers moving toward iPhone; will PS Vita give them an experience also? Also, people expect games that are between $1 and $5 if not free, but Vita games are $40 or $50 in most cases. Are you doing cheaper games too?

Yoshida: Yes and yes. It’s a big challenge, I completely agree. I play iPhone games as well. I spend a dollar or free with advertising. Some games are really fun to play. But still, as a gamer I want more. And the kinds of games I can play on iPhone are great, but that’s not all I want to play. When I play PS Vita — so the big question is, can we as software developers create an experience that’s so compelling and unique that’s only available on PS Vita so that consumers are willing to pay that higher price? That’s the key question. It depends on each title. But each title is developed on top of the hardware, so you cannot surpass the features or performance of the hardware as a game developer. So from that standpoint, I believe PlayStation Vita has great hardware features in terms of both performance and unique feature set that includes dual analog sticks and the big beautiful screen and the unique interface like back touch, AR camera of 3G connectivity.

I believe that some of the games that come out on Vita will look exactly the same on iPhone, and if it’s sold for a premium price on Vita, people wouldn’t buy them. But as far as really great experience only available on PS Vita, that kind of game, I believe that people are still willing to pay a premium price for.

As to your second question, are we doing small games — yes, at launch I’m waiting to download Escape Plan, or Motorstorm RC, or Sound Shapes is so creative and great. These are small games, digital only, you can download them for a lower price. We are doing these types of games as well.

[The Last Guardian] is playable, but not to the point that we can talk about the timing of launch.

Wired: Okay, The Last Guardian. Where’s The Last Guardian?

Yoshida: First, let me set some facts straight. There was a rumor that [creative director Fumito] Ueda had left the company, which we confirmed. But it’s not like he left the making of The Last Guardian. He’s on top of the game and coming into the office. He could be the person who’s in the office for the longest time. The difference is that he used to be a regular employee. But now we have a contract to define his role. It’s a very special contribution and role that he plays and we agreed, let’s make it more official, more special. That’s the only difference.

He never left the team, he’s on top of the game and the team is making progress. But the progress is slow and sometimes the team has to go back and review things. There’s a vision that we want to realize but it’s very very tough and technical issue that the team is tackling and some plans have to be made to evaluate and go through the process. At one point the progress was great, so we talked about the timing of the launch in the past. But now it’s making progress, but still not to the level — it’s playable, but not to the point that we can talk about the timing of launch.

Wired: I’ve heard that people from Sony Santa Monica have gone to Japan to work in tandem, collaborate with the Japan team on this game.

Yoshida: Did you read it on the internet?

Wired: I did not read it on the internet, no; I’ve heard from more reliable sources than the internet.

Yoshida: Well, you know, it’s not just Santa Monica. We have great tech people in Worldwide Studios. We have a central tech group in the U.S. and the U.K. so we are giving them whatever help they need. Technically, we have the best engineers in the U.S. and Europe, so these teams are helping them, giving advice.

Wired: What’s up with PlayStation Suite? When is that coming to Vita?

Yoshida: We haven’t renewed the… we haven’t made a new announcement on the timing, but we are definitely looking at sometime this year to add PS Suite games on the PS Vita store as well as Android devices. We made an announcement of additional Android phone support at CES, I believe. So the SDK is out to a limited number of developers in the alpha stage, so the SDK is out, some people are experimenting on it so the company is building the infrastructure so that those people can eventually be able to publish their content. We are at that stage and we will try to increase the number of people who are able to get a hold of the SDK and give us feedback. Please wait for the next announcement.

Wired: What about PlayStation 1 games? A lot of people are waiting to download them.

Yoshida: Yeah, yeah, I am too. I get a lot of tweets asking about, when are PS1 games coming to the store? The goal was, we get all PSP downloadable games to work on PS Vita, and the PS1 games to work on PS Vita. From a PSP emu standpoint, we are almost there. Ninety-plus percent of PSP PSN games are already on the Japanese store to download. And the team is focusing on getting the U.S. and European launch as good in terms of coverage of the PSP titles on the store. So that’s the focus. Because of that, we are really trying for a high percent of the PSP games to go on the PS Vita for launch in the U.S. and Europe. After that we will shift focus to get PS1 games on PS Vita. It’s still going to happen, but we cannot tell when. I’m hoping for sooner rather than later.

I was very surprised when they announced the price of the 3DS as $250 at launch.

Wired: What’s on everyone’s mind over the last few months is that Nintendo brought out its 3DS at $250, and very publicly said, sales were not what we thought they were going to be at $250 and they had to have this massive climbdown and lower the price. Are you worried that you’re pricing the system at the same level they just did and that it’ll be a challenge?

Yoshida: Personally, I was very surprised when they announced the price of the 3DS as $250 at launch. And personally I was surprised again by the announcement of the price cut, the size of it was massive, they went really aggressive. And that worked, it worked for them in the Christmas period in judging the sales of 3DS. But we’re not selling the same system. What we have with PS Vita is very different from the 3DS. It’s a great system but very different. We are targeting different consumers, I believe, and what we are offering is about value for the money. I believe that this system, there are people who see the value at $250 or $300, but there is a broader audience that might not be willing to pay this price at this point. We’re going to work hard to add more features and more casual games and whatnot in the future. But as far as the pricing at the launch is concerned, we are not worried.

Wired: What do you have to do to convince developers — obviously being more secure against piracy is a big thing, but what do you have to do to get third-party publishers on board?

Yoshida: Publishers are a much more difficult challenge than developers. Developers love making games, they see the hardware’s potential, they’re very excited. But they have to, in many cases, convince the management or publisher side for them to greenlight their proposal internally. Because there are so many platforms and opportunities now, because parts of the industry are growing really fast like iPhone, cellphone or social games, publishers are hedging bets into many different platforms. We really have to work hard in terms of communicating to the third parties; these are the kinds of consumers we’re targeting and this is the lineup we have from a first-party standpoint and why each concept that you have would be great for PS Vita and consumers that we’re going to capture. After launch, they should see the money growing and they should see their own people really enthused and excited about some unique ideas. So all that will contribute to their decisions. Our publishing relations team will continue to work on that.

Wired: You’re convincing people to take a risk. Because the games are so much more elaborate and cost so much more to the consumer, you’ve really got to get out there and sell this thing, convince publishers to roll the dice on making Vita games more so than if it was an iPhone game.

Yoshida: But at the same time, when the market is growing and the barrier to entry is so low you see thousands of games coming in on those platforms, Facebook, iPhone or whatnot. It’s not easy to get your game in the mind of consumers. It could be a very small fraction of winners taking all the money. When you look at it that way, it could be riskier to go that way unless you already own the consumers on those platforms and you have an internal way to communicate and cross-promote those games. Compared to a new platform, with still a limited number of titles and there are people who spend money, a good amount of money to purchase new hardware, it’s very likely that they want to get content for those shiny new machines. So there are some publishers who see that as an opportunity as well. While there are still a limited number of titles on a new platform, it may be the best chance to introduce some new [ones].

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